Studies in World Cinema
A Critical Journal
Editor-in-Chief:
Eva Jørholt
Eva Jørholt
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Associate Editors:
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Olivia Khoo
Olivia Khoo
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Jeremi Szaniawski
Jeremi Szaniawski
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Studies in World Cinema: A Critical Journal takes a pluralistic, polycentric and non-normative approach to the notion of ‘world cinema,’ treating it as a fluid and expansive term. The journal examines both local and global cinematic perspectives and their points of intersection, taking into account historical contexts as well as contemporary developments. It also explores the power dynamics surrounding access to and visibility in the global film market.
Contributions from scholars worldwide are welcomed on a variety of topics such as traveling cinematic tropes, creolization, transnational practices, global genres, remakes and adaptations in new settings, translation cultures, migrant and diasporic films, collaborations, co-productions, film festivals, multinational filmmaking and films addressing global issues like climate change and globalization. The journal also explores how new technologies influence global film distribution and how cinema creates new perceptions of the world. Theoretical reflections on ‘world cinema’ and related terms, such as transnational cinema, are also encouraged, with many more subjects open for exploration.
The editorial board of the SWC warmly welcomes submissions for open-call issues.
The journal also publishes themed special issues, for which contributions are invited from guest editors. Guest editors who are interested to submit a proposal for a special issue can contact the publisher, Masja Horn, masja.horn@brill.com
Peer Review Policy: All articles published in Studies in World Cinema: A Critical Journal undergo a double-anonymous external peer review process. This includes articles published in special issues.
Contributions from scholars worldwide are welcomed on a variety of topics such as traveling cinematic tropes, creolization, transnational practices, global genres, remakes and adaptations in new settings, translation cultures, migrant and diasporic films, collaborations, co-productions, film festivals, multinational filmmaking and films addressing global issues like climate change and globalization. The journal also explores how new technologies influence global film distribution and how cinema creates new perceptions of the world. Theoretical reflections on ‘world cinema’ and related terms, such as transnational cinema, are also encouraged, with many more subjects open for exploration.
The editorial board of the SWC warmly welcomes submissions for open-call issues.
The journal also publishes themed special issues, for which contributions are invited from guest editors. Guest editors who are interested to submit a proposal for a special issue can contact the publisher, Masja Horn, masja.horn@brill.com
Peer Review Policy: All articles published in Studies in World Cinema: A Critical Journal undergo a double-anonymous external peer review process. This includes articles published in special issues.
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Editor-in-chief
Eva Jørholt, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Associate Editors
Olivia Khoo, Monash University, Australia
Jeremi Szaniawski, University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA, USA
Book Review Editor
Esin Paça Cengiz, Kadir Has University, Turkey
Editorial Board
Dudley Andrew, Yale University, Connecticut, USA
Savas Arslan, Dokuz Eylül University, Turkey
Daniela Berghahn, Royal Holloway University of London, UK
Shohini Chaudhuri, University of Essex, UK
Christine Gledhill, University of Leeds, UK
Ana Grgić, Babeș-Bolyai University, Romania
Mette Hjort, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Dina Iordanova, University of St. Andrews, UK
Song Hwee Lim, National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan
Philippe Meers, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Hamid Naficy, Northwestern University, Illinois, USA
Lucia Nagib, University of Reading, UK
Onookome Okome, University of Alberta, Canada
Richard Peña, Columbia University, NY, USA
Eva Jørholt, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Associate Editors
Olivia Khoo, Monash University, Australia
Jeremi Szaniawski, University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA, USA
Book Review Editor
Esin Paça Cengiz, Kadir Has University, Turkey
Editorial Board
Dudley Andrew, Yale University, Connecticut, USA
Savas Arslan, Dokuz Eylül University, Turkey
Daniela Berghahn, Royal Holloway University of London, UK
Shohini Chaudhuri, University of Essex, UK
Christine Gledhill, University of Leeds, UK
Ana Grgić, Babeș-Bolyai University, Romania
Mette Hjort, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Dina Iordanova, University of St. Andrews, UK
Song Hwee Lim, National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan
Philippe Meers, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Hamid Naficy, Northwestern University, Illinois, USA
Lucia Nagib, University of Reading, UK
Onookome Okome, University of Alberta, Canada
Richard Peña, Columbia University, NY, USA
International Federation of Film Archives - https://www.fiafnet.org/
European Network for Cinema and Media Studies - https://necs.org/node/120637
European Network for Cinema and Media Studies - https://necs.org/node/120637
Online submission: Studies in World Cinema uses Editorial Manager, a web based submission and peer review tracking system. All manuscripts should therefore be submitted online at editorialmanager.com/SWC. First time users need to register first via the ‘Register Now’ link. Once registered, you will receive an email containing your personal access codes. With these access codes you can log into the Editorial Manager website as an author and submit your manuscript for evaluation by the editors. Please make sure to consult the Author Instructions prior to submission to ensure your submission is formatted correctly.
Download Author Instructions (PDF).
For more details on online submission, please visit our EM Support page.
For any questions about submission via Editorial Manager, please contact Brill's EM support.
For any questions about your manuscript, please contact the SWC Editorial Office.
All other matters can be directed to the publisher at BRILL, Masja Horn.
Proposals for book reviews and review articles should be sent to the book review editor, Amber Shields, adding 'Book Review Proposal for Studies in World Cinema' to your subject line.
Please do not send any physical books to either the publisher or the journal.
Download Author Instructions (PDF).
For more details on online submission, please visit our EM Support page.
For any questions about submission via Editorial Manager, please contact Brill's EM support.
For any questions about your manuscript, please contact the SWC Editorial Office.
All other matters can be directed to the publisher at BRILL, Masja Horn.
Proposals for book reviews and review articles should be sent to the book review editor, Amber Shields, adding 'Book Review Proposal for Studies in World Cinema' to your subject line.
Please do not send any physical books to either the publisher or the journal.
CALL FOR PAPERS
Call for Papers for Studies in World Cinema
Indigenous Cinemas from South Asia: Agency, Mediation, Representation
Guest Editors: Shohini Chaudhuri, Swapna Gopinath
Since the 1990s, the impact of transnational flows in technology, finance and knowledge have significantly altered the trajectories of filmmaking from South-Asian countries. Among the new developments is indigenous cinema, in a multitude of linguistic varieties and cultural diversities. South Asia is home to several indigenous communities, with India alone having 104 million Adivasi communities across the nation, as per the 2011 census data (Adivasi being the collective term for indigenous groups in India). These communities share certain features, their heterogeneity being the most striking. Many of these communities belong to the margins, with minimal resources and social capital to ensure their wellbeing.
Although indigenous communities have often been misrepresented in earlier forms of cinema, including in ethnographic and mainstream South-Asian cinemas, they have become more vocal and visible in the contemporary, globalised arena, narrating their own stories and making their creative presence felt as filmmakers or technicians within the industry, raising a new set of questions around their agency and representation. South Asian indigenous cinemas often attempt to refashion indigenous representations by shattering former constructs of indigeneity. Practices from the margins are foregrounded in the aesthetic and narrative style of these films that seek to reclaim indigenous identities and experiences. Among striking developments are films like Dhabari Quruvi (2022) from India, which has an exclusively indigenous cast, or Mor Thengari (2015) from Bangladesh, the country’s first film in the Chagma language, or Numafung (2001) from Nepal which addresses patriarchy among the Limbu people and has amateur actors from that community acting in the film.
Both nonfiction and fiction films by indigenous filmmakers make use of their own languages, and chronicle their lived experiences. Since their art is often an expression of their everyday life, it also potentially becomes a subversion of hegemonic practices, detailed in forms and methods particular to their culture, albeit mediated by new technologies and the cultural industries that partake in their production and distribution. South Asian film festivals showcasing trends in indigenous cinema, such as Nepal International Film Festival, bear witness to the profusion of indigenous cinematic expression. They are notable for being archives of microhistories, enabling voices of resistance and assertion of identities by indigenous communities that strive to preserve their cultural practices from the homogenising patterns of modernisation.
Research into indigenous cinema and indigenous filmmakers’ creative processes, along with study of their reception within the popular cultural domain, aids the communities and their artists in their practices of self-assertion as indigenous collectives. In their introductory chapter to the edited book Global Indigenous Media: Cultures, Poetics and Politics, Wilson and Stewart claim that these cinematic practices are themselves counter-discourses, thereby creating counter-publics who will initiate conversations on indigenous epistemologies. Schleiter and de Maaker also explore the paradigm shifts in production and dissemination in the larger media landscape and speak of the “valorisation of indigeneity” through the regionalising and localising of content (Schleiter and de Maaker 2020, 12). However, while other indigenous cinemas – for example, of North America, Australasia and the Arctic (Wood 2008, Columpar 2010, Pearson and Knabe 2015) and of Latin America (Salazar and Cordova 2008, Gonzalez Rodriguez 2022) – have been widely studied, in the South Asian context, there is a paucity of research that explores indigenous cinema and its varied dimensions, its dynamics within the hegemonic structures of the nation and its role in depicting a community’s lived experiences.
Hence, this special issue will address the politics of representation and the influence of creative industries on the filmmaking process in indigenous cinemas from South Asia, contextualising them within the larger social, economic, technological and institutional structures and factors influencing film production and distribution. Positioning these films within a national / transnational cinema framework, it seeks different ways of reading these indigenous cinematic stories and their depiction of the rhythms of distinctive lifeworlds and spatial realities. We therefore invite explorations of indigenous cinemas from multiple perspectives, including textual analysis, audience research, decolonial theories, haptic visuality and rhythmanalysis. Additionally, we actively seek contributions from scholars based in the Global South. Practitioners are also welcome to submit articles reflecting on their practice.
We invite contributions related to, but not limited to, the following topics:
Indigeneity in national cinema and/or within the national cinematic imagination
Specificities and commonalities among indigenous cinemas in South Asia and beyond
Archiving indigenous cinemas
Documentaries/docufictions on indigenous experiences
Opportunities and limitations offered to indigenous filmmakers by creative media industries
Film festivals and indigenous cinemas
Use of indigenous languages in cinema and/or linguistic identity in indigenous cinemas
Narrative styles adapted for indigenous cinemas
The role of indigenous cinemas within wider popular culture
The archiving of indigenous experiences within cinema
Timeline for contributions
Proposals, consisting of a title, a 300-400-word abstract and a brief author’s bio, should be sent to Swapna Gopinath (gopinathswapna@aol.com) and Shohini Chaudhuri (schaudh@essex.ac.uk) by 1 October 2024. Notifications of acceptance or non-acceptance will be sent out by the end of November 2024.
The submission deadline for completed articles (max 8,000 words) is 1 September 2025. All contributions will then undergo double-blind peer review. Publication is planned for spring 2026. Any queries should be addressed to Swapna Gopinath (gopinathswapna@aol.com) and Shohini Chaudhuri (schaudh@essex.ac.uk).
References
Columpar, Corinn. 2010. Unsettling Sights: The Fourth World on Film. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press
Gonzalez Rodriguez, Milton Fernando. 2022. Indigeneity in Latin American Cinema. London: Bloomsbury, 2022.
Knabe, Susan and Wendy Gay Pearson, eds. 2015. Reverse Shots: Indigenous Film and Media in an International Context. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
Salazar, Juan Francisco and Amalia Córdova. 2008. “Imperfect media and the poetics of indigenous video in Latin America.” In Global Indigenous Media: Cultures, Poetics and Politics, edited by Pamela Wilson and Michelle Stewart, 39-57. Durham: Duke University Press.
Schleiter, Markus and Erik de Maaker, eds. 2020. Media, Indigeneity and Nation in South Asia. New York: Routledge.
Wilson, Pamela and Michelle Stewart. 2008. “Indigeneity and indigenous media on the global stage.” In Global Indigenous Media: Cultures, Poetics and Politics, edited by Pamela Wilson and Michelle Stewart, 2-35. Durham: Duke University Press.
Wood, Houston. 2008. Native Features: Indigenous Films from Around the World. New York: Continuum.
Call for Papers for Studies in World Cinema
Indigenous Cinemas from South Asia: Agency, Mediation, Representation
Guest Editors: Shohini Chaudhuri, Swapna Gopinath
Since the 1990s, the impact of transnational flows in technology, finance and knowledge have significantly altered the trajectories of filmmaking from South-Asian countries. Among the new developments is indigenous cinema, in a multitude of linguistic varieties and cultural diversities. South Asia is home to several indigenous communities, with India alone having 104 million Adivasi communities across the nation, as per the 2011 census data (Adivasi being the collective term for indigenous groups in India). These communities share certain features, their heterogeneity being the most striking. Many of these communities belong to the margins, with minimal resources and social capital to ensure their wellbeing.
Although indigenous communities have often been misrepresented in earlier forms of cinema, including in ethnographic and mainstream South-Asian cinemas, they have become more vocal and visible in the contemporary, globalised arena, narrating their own stories and making their creative presence felt as filmmakers or technicians within the industry, raising a new set of questions around their agency and representation. South Asian indigenous cinemas often attempt to refashion indigenous representations by shattering former constructs of indigeneity. Practices from the margins are foregrounded in the aesthetic and narrative style of these films that seek to reclaim indigenous identities and experiences. Among striking developments are films like Dhabari Quruvi (2022) from India, which has an exclusively indigenous cast, or Mor Thengari (2015) from Bangladesh, the country’s first film in the Chagma language, or Numafung (2001) from Nepal which addresses patriarchy among the Limbu people and has amateur actors from that community acting in the film.
Both nonfiction and fiction films by indigenous filmmakers make use of their own languages, and chronicle their lived experiences. Since their art is often an expression of their everyday life, it also potentially becomes a subversion of hegemonic practices, detailed in forms and methods particular to their culture, albeit mediated by new technologies and the cultural industries that partake in their production and distribution. South Asian film festivals showcasing trends in indigenous cinema, such as Nepal International Film Festival, bear witness to the profusion of indigenous cinematic expression. They are notable for being archives of microhistories, enabling voices of resistance and assertion of identities by indigenous communities that strive to preserve their cultural practices from the homogenising patterns of modernisation.
Research into indigenous cinema and indigenous filmmakers’ creative processes, along with study of their reception within the popular cultural domain, aids the communities and their artists in their practices of self-assertion as indigenous collectives. In their introductory chapter to the edited book Global Indigenous Media: Cultures, Poetics and Politics, Wilson and Stewart claim that these cinematic practices are themselves counter-discourses, thereby creating counter-publics who will initiate conversations on indigenous epistemologies. Schleiter and de Maaker also explore the paradigm shifts in production and dissemination in the larger media landscape and speak of the “valorisation of indigeneity” through the regionalising and localising of content (Schleiter and de Maaker 2020, 12). However, while other indigenous cinemas – for example, of North America, Australasia and the Arctic (Wood 2008, Columpar 2010, Pearson and Knabe 2015) and of Latin America (Salazar and Cordova 2008, Gonzalez Rodriguez 2022) – have been widely studied, in the South Asian context, there is a paucity of research that explores indigenous cinema and its varied dimensions, its dynamics within the hegemonic structures of the nation and its role in depicting a community’s lived experiences.
Hence, this special issue will address the politics of representation and the influence of creative industries on the filmmaking process in indigenous cinemas from South Asia, contextualising them within the larger social, economic, technological and institutional structures and factors influencing film production and distribution. Positioning these films within a national / transnational cinema framework, it seeks different ways of reading these indigenous cinematic stories and their depiction of the rhythms of distinctive lifeworlds and spatial realities. We therefore invite explorations of indigenous cinemas from multiple perspectives, including textual analysis, audience research, decolonial theories, haptic visuality and rhythmanalysis. Additionally, we actively seek contributions from scholars based in the Global South. Practitioners are also welcome to submit articles reflecting on their practice.
We invite contributions related to, but not limited to, the following topics:
Indigeneity in national cinema and/or within the national cinematic imagination
Specificities and commonalities among indigenous cinemas in South Asia and beyond
Archiving indigenous cinemas
Documentaries/docufictions on indigenous experiences
Opportunities and limitations offered to indigenous filmmakers by creative media industries
Film festivals and indigenous cinemas
Use of indigenous languages in cinema and/or linguistic identity in indigenous cinemas
Narrative styles adapted for indigenous cinemas
The role of indigenous cinemas within wider popular culture
The archiving of indigenous experiences within cinema
Timeline for contributions
Proposals, consisting of a title, a 300-400-word abstract and a brief author’s bio, should be sent to Swapna Gopinath (gopinathswapna@aol.com) and Shohini Chaudhuri (schaudh@essex.ac.uk) by 1 October 2024. Notifications of acceptance or non-acceptance will be sent out by the end of November 2024.
The submission deadline for completed articles (max 8,000 words) is 1 September 2025. All contributions will then undergo double-blind peer review. Publication is planned for spring 2026. Any queries should be addressed to Swapna Gopinath (gopinathswapna@aol.com) and Shohini Chaudhuri (schaudh@essex.ac.uk).
References
Columpar, Corinn. 2010. Unsettling Sights: The Fourth World on Film. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press
Gonzalez Rodriguez, Milton Fernando. 2022. Indigeneity in Latin American Cinema. London: Bloomsbury, 2022.
Knabe, Susan and Wendy Gay Pearson, eds. 2015. Reverse Shots: Indigenous Film and Media in an International Context. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
Salazar, Juan Francisco and Amalia Córdova. 2008. “Imperfect media and the poetics of indigenous video in Latin America.” In Global Indigenous Media: Cultures, Poetics and Politics, edited by Pamela Wilson and Michelle Stewart, 39-57. Durham: Duke University Press.
Schleiter, Markus and Erik de Maaker, eds. 2020. Media, Indigeneity and Nation in South Asia. New York: Routledge.
Wilson, Pamela and Michelle Stewart. 2008. “Indigeneity and indigenous media on the global stage.” In Global Indigenous Media: Cultures, Poetics and Politics, edited by Pamela Wilson and Michelle Stewart, 2-35. Durham: Duke University Press.
Wood, Houston. 2008. Native Features: Indigenous Films from Around the World. New York: Continuum.
“The study of World Cinema is one of the most vibrant and fastest growing areas in film studies. Encompassing global art cinema as well as popular genre films and their transnational reception, World Cinema is an amorphous and critically versatile concept that invites contestation and debate. Studies in World Cinema is the first journal dedicated to this urgent critical endeavour.” - Daniela Berghahn, Professor of Film Studies, University of London, Royal Holloway
Graduate students and scholars working in the fields of cinema studies, world literature, and the visual arts.
Studies in World Cinema
A Critical Journal
Editor-in-Chief:
Eva Jørholt
Eva Jørholt
Search for other papers by Eva Jørholt in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Search for other papers by Eva Jørholt in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Associate Editors:
and
Olivia Khoo
Olivia Khoo
Search for other papers by Olivia Khoo in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Search for other papers by Olivia Khoo in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Jeremi Szaniawski
Jeremi Szaniawski
Search for other papers by Jeremi Szaniawski in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Search for other papers by Jeremi Szaniawski in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Studies in World Cinema: A Critical Journal takes a pluralistic, polycentric and non-normative approach to the notion of ‘world cinema,’ treating it as a fluid and expansive term. The journal examines both local and global cinematic perspectives and their points of intersection, taking into account historical contexts as well as contemporary developments. It also explores the power dynamics surrounding access to and visibility in the global film market.
Contributions from scholars worldwide are welcomed on a variety of topics such as traveling cinematic tropes, creolization, transnational practices, global genres, remakes and adaptations in new settings, translation cultures, migrant and diasporic films, collaborations, co-productions, film festivals, multinational filmmaking and films addressing global issues like climate change and globalization. The journal also explores how new technologies influence global film distribution and how cinema creates new perceptions of the world. Theoretical reflections on ‘world cinema’ and related terms, such as transnational cinema, are also encouraged, with many more subjects open for exploration.
The editorial board of the SWC warmly welcomes submissions for open-call issues.
The journal also publishes themed special issues, for which contributions are invited from guest editors. Guest editors who are interested to submit a proposal for a special issue can contact the publisher, Masja Horn, masja.horn@brill.com
Peer Review Policy: All articles published in Studies in World Cinema: A Critical Journal undergo a double-anonymous external peer review process. This includes articles published in special issues.
Contributions from scholars worldwide are welcomed on a variety of topics such as traveling cinematic tropes, creolization, transnational practices, global genres, remakes and adaptations in new settings, translation cultures, migrant and diasporic films, collaborations, co-productions, film festivals, multinational filmmaking and films addressing global issues like climate change and globalization. The journal also explores how new technologies influence global film distribution and how cinema creates new perceptions of the world. Theoretical reflections on ‘world cinema’ and related terms, such as transnational cinema, are also encouraged, with many more subjects open for exploration.
The editorial board of the SWC warmly welcomes submissions for open-call issues.
The journal also publishes themed special issues, for which contributions are invited from guest editors. Guest editors who are interested to submit a proposal for a special issue can contact the publisher, Masja Horn, masja.horn@brill.com
Peer Review Policy: All articles published in Studies in World Cinema: A Critical Journal undergo a double-anonymous external peer review process. This includes articles published in special issues.
-
Print + Online€324.00$377.00
-
Print Only€297.00$345.00
-
Online only€270.00$314.00
-
To place an order, please contact customerservices@brill.com
-
Online only€90.00$106.00
-
Print Only€90.00$106.00
-
To place an order, please contact customerservices@brill.com